They had been assured
that the city would fight to the last. Now their defenders had
marched away leaving them to the mercy of the conqueror.
The streets were soon filled with a dangerous, howling cursing mob
man of them armed, all of them desperate. Yet calmly through it,
as if on parade, marched two Federal officers, without escort of
protection of any kind. The mob jostled them, shook loaded pistols
in their faces, yelling and cursing the while. But the two officers
marched on side by side unmoved, showing neither anger nor fear,
turning neither to right nor to left until they reached the city
hall, where they demanded the surrender of the city.
"It was one of the bravest deeds I ever saw done," said a Southerner,
who as a boy of fourteen watched the scene.
By the taking of New Orleans Farragut won for himself great fame.
His fame was all the greater because in his fleet he had none of
the newly invented ironclads. With only wooden vessels he had fought
and conquered. "It was a contest between iron hearts and wooden
vessels, and iron clads with iron beaks, and the iron hearts won,"
said Captain Bailey who served in the expedition under Farragut.
After taking New Orleans Farragut sailed up the river and took Baton
Rouge, the state capital. So at length the Federals had control
of the whole lower river as far as Vicksburg.
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